Is Whatnot’s $12B Valuation Real or Hype? Ryan and Brian Break It Down

You got what? Not for last streaming. They dominated that so much. So what I think is like, hey, look at what we did over here for sports cards and live shopping. We're going to crush it all. And they might, but like, that's a high valuation. There's a lot of things that potential and investing potentials doesn't always work out. eBay should not confuse themselves. They're marketplace versus their live streaming. They're different companies and they have to look at it differently and be like, we're protecting what we built on the marketplace or we're attacking what we want. You know business low enough. That's different from in town. Tani didn't have a great night, but what a series so far. We were high on LA coming after their last series. It seemed like they'd come in, but the Blue Jays are like, not so fast, my friend. We can score and we can score fast. Welcome to Trading Cards and Collectibles Podcast on the Radcast Network. From Chasing Grails to Colin Bluffs, I'm going inside the hobby. Are you ready to collect? Let's get at it. Here is your host, Ryan Alford. Hello, and welcome to Trading Cards and Collectibles. It's Brian and Ryan here on. Well, it's a Thursday, Wednesday for us. Brian, my days are rolling together. I'm looking to rain out the window going, oh my god, finishing this move in the studio, but I'm glad to be with you, man. It's always a pleasure, my man. I like it starting to come together. It is. It's coming together. It's good. Look, dude, this is just like a taster. This is going to be like a sports center set here, saying, we're big depths of imagination and lighting and all kinds of stuff. This is just getting through to the other side to we can like pull out the big guns. That's awesome. Well, I know your vision. I know what the vision is, and I know you. You'll get there. Yes. It might be painful for some, including me. If you should send the bandages, I was ripping off my hands just to get on. I had white bandages. I've cuts on every finger and moving shit and being impatient like I am. I'm ready to talk some collectibles. Take my mind off of painting and moving. Well, let's do it. What's happened in this week? What's going on with LudEx? What's the life of the CEO? What's big in your territory? This week is kind of quiet for me. I mean, obviously, the meetings and working 12 hours is like the norm, but I'm home. I'm not traveling. We have a couple cool releases coming out this week that we're concentrating on. We're also up for an award on mantle. They're doing kind of like the collectibles awards, and it goes from best hobby shop to podcast, and we're nominated for innovation. That's cool. We're doing some things around that. If we win or don't win, whatever, but the fact is it's cool for us to get out there and be recognized at some level. We're excited about that around here. We're moving in a month, which I'll get your advice on that when it happens, and then I'll be at the card shop next week starting taking videos and showing you guys what we got going on. I'm excited to see that. We'll have links to the award heck. Give us some love. If you enjoy the content, we're just cutting it up. We're just getting started here on the show. We'll be on the podcast towards next year. We're like 12, 14 episodes in, so we'll keep making waves. I guess I did more. I guess top three in all sports on Apple wasn't enough to make the awards for this year, but we'll keep focusing. Hey, we got to keep working hard, man. But you do need to go vote for innovation. LudEx, they are innovators in the space. Ryan and I are friends, but I only become friends with people whose products I love first. So it is well, look, just being up for it's a big deal. So congrats on that. Congrats to team. And if you're listening, give us some love. Vote twice, three times. Tell your friends. Tell your friends, friends. Yeah, tell your friends, friends. But it's cool of them to do it. I mean, the hobby is so big and there's so many things going on. So it's, look, I mean, we all like recognition and it's good for like, you know, companies like yours that have teams and stuff like that stuff matters like this isn't participation trophy. This is companies freaking doing things in hobbies that are hundreds of years old that needed innovation and needed leadership and guidance like what Brian's doing and like, this is what the hobby needs. It needs companies like LudEx being successful and bringing ideas and bringing technology. So the stuff matters collectibles.show is where you'll find all of the channels and learn more about what we're doing and ultimately, hey, we want to hear from you. You do case hits at collectibles.show. What's you to send in your favorite pulls of the week? And here's the difference. This isn't about just value. Hey, we want to see some $10,000 hits had a couple of those myself a few months back, but it's not just about the values about what you're collecting. What means something to you? Share a story, share a video of you holding up the card that you hit last week. That was your favorite player and you nailed it. So case hits at collectibles.show send in those videos. I want to know the stories. We're going to bring it to life here on the show. We're going to do a segment each week once we get rolling and get some videos in where we share that on the show with us. We want to feature you on collectibles show. We got the market pulse this week. Who's who's popping like it's hot? All right. Well, there's a couple on here that makes sense and there's a couple that not doesn't make tons of sense. But so it's all football. And the first one is the prison silver jython Taylor PSA 10 is up 34%. He moved from 83rd on the trending players to seven. So that's quite the jump. This is one I'm a little I don't know about this one. Jamar Chase is up 23% and he went from trending players at 110 to 22. Interesting. Because I mean, he's been out there a while. I mean, I didn't see them do great things. No, I mean, there's kind of suck. I mean, even like up and down with burrow out. And so I don't know what suddenly I mean, he's having a bang up year like Clayton. My son has been fantasy and all he always says is crushing it in fantasy. So maybe there's some tie in with fantasy. Yeah, it could be. And then the last one is and you're going to have to help me with his name is Jackson Smith in Jigba in Jigba in Jigba in Jigba in Jigba in Jigba. I think I'm almost saying it's funny, but that's I do know how to pronounce his name. I feel like trying to play it in JSN. Yeah, JSN is what you need to say. He's up 42% and he went from 143 on the trending players to 93. Yeah, he's having it. He's legit. Hey, world's world series. Oh, yeah, batani didn't have a great night last night. No, but what a series so far. 22, battling back and forth. I think some people like mistakenly thought and we were high on L.A. coming after after their last series. It seemed like they come in, but Blue Jays are like not so fast, my friend. We can score and we can score fast. Yeah, I mean, they're they're doing everything they need to do. And you know, that 18-inning game or whatever, I mean, the umpire. I don't know if you saw it, but like in the second inning, the umpire, that like I've never seen umpire like that. Even like it like literally. It's like the guy did not speak and when you don't say strike, the whole world knows it as a ball and it was really bad and that guy should not be able to be getting more. Not ever, but definitely not in the world series, right? Are we out in the world series or we got L.A. and New York, right? Yeah, it's tight. So L.A. has got just over 74,000 and the Yankees have just under 64,000. So 10,000 away, which, you know, that, that couldn't, that could slip. Good flip. And be interesting though, 10,000 scan. I mean, with millions that you guys get a week, right? I mean, 10,000 is not hard to flip. No, that can happen. Now, the only thing that's going to, this work against you if you're the Yankees, I mean Yankees players are always going to get scanned a lot because they're Yankees and they're popular. The only thing working against you is just you got the L.A. players live and playing and as the stakes continue to get higher in the series, you're going to, you might see those continue to jump. Who'd have been really interesting if they had like a, a big release? That would be cool. Yeah. The, um, you seen any of the new tops basketball? You've been any of that? Yeah. I mean, they're doing what everyone does. They throw out their cheap product first. Get everyone to buy it. And then they start elevating it. But yeah, I mean, it's fine. I mean, it's exactly what they need to do. Yeah. They, um, yeah, it makes me want chrome, but yeah, like, what it's supposed to be. And but I did see like an interesting comment. I wanted to get your take on the president of upper deck. I don't have his name. You probably see Jason. Jason. Yeah. He made a comment that said right now, the speculation just going on in general in the hobby is unsustainable. And you know, $1,000 a box and like, there's nowhere to go, but potentially down. I don't know. He was very, uh, Debbie doubt her a little bit about the sustainability. And I'm going to give you my thoughts. And I want to get yours. I feel like there's been these moments like the pandemic and everything that were obvious bubbles. I feel like this has been sort of a slow burn coming with, with sort of big money coming in investors coming in. And it's like, I think you've just, you've got like this institutional money and, and things that have been slow burn coming in that this doesn't feel like an unnatural bubble like the pandemic or something. And so while maybe it will have its burning hot moments and simmering a bit, but this feels different to me. Uh, what says you? I mean, I agree with you. I think that's really a good point. Um, I think it's this is sustainable. And I mean, someone coming out and just broadly saying the this industry, like what part of the industry are you talking about? Are you talking about what does wax? Yes, I agree. Like that that shit's not great, right? Yeah. But that's only such a small part of this industry where that might work. Like the wax, he might be right. But singles and people going to shop shows and people collecting and flipping. It's like that industry only getting bigger. And he's wrong. And in my opinion, he's wrong because he macroly put the whole industry into one bucket. Yeah. Uh, speaking of opening wax and losing money. Oh, boy, I like it. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. This is, hey, this is we're talking real money people here. This is where if you were kind of halfway paying attention on the treadmill, this is when you really tune in. You turn it over to YouTube so you can watch the rip card. And it's going to be a loser. Like this card's gone for 300 bucks. What do you think? How about this? I think it's a loser. Because I, uh, I just, I like to be pleasantly surprised. How about if it's something ridiculous, we, we do something fun with the proceeds. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. How do you got your rip card? And who's the player? Ellie? Oh, they are crews. Rookie card. Yep. They look crews. Rookie card rip card. It's already worth 300 folks. So Ryan's going to rip it here. It went 300. As the $300 stamp you just ripped off. Right now, I just see uniforms. I don't see anything else. So I'm going to the bottom one. Oh, boy. And now I have to then, I guess, rip this open. Dale Murphy stained glass. All right. Oh, boy. You tell me what you think about this. Okay. Curstead? Not much. Can't be worth it. It's the guy from the Boreys Curstead. This is Rookie. No. Okay. This, I think. Okay. Then you have Daxon. Merrill. Yeah. This is Rookie card. stained glass. That's a good card. That's a good. I think that's a good card. And then this one I think could be really good. This is a Jackson Hollow. Ooh. stained glass. Okay. All right. How do we get the value on that? This one. Lux comes up with between $110 and $210 for the stained glass on. Yeah. Okay. Then I'm going to skin this card. If that's $200, Jackson, Merrill's also $117 to 18. Oh, wow. Look. Let's just go high and $200. That's $400. You might have just, you might have gone over. I think I might have gone over. Wow. Yeah. Okay. I think those cops are probably pretty decent. And then this is the base one is just $5 to $10. So dude, I think we, I think we did it higher. Let's even go low in. Like the worst you're broke even. I will give away. I will give away one of these next week to listeners. Yes. Please. He's going to give it away. We're a stained glass. You got to, yeah. Here we go. Holding him up. I've got to be watching this. You got to see this or cool looking. Yeah. It says inside this card an exclusive mini stained glass parallel and two of the following mini parallel, mini with parallel, mini metal and sketch card. So I got two stained glass like that's I think I think I won. I think you definitely won. All right. There we go. I think it was a successful rip. We'll figure out a giveaway for next week. So stay tuned. Stay tuned. Those are cool. You did way better than me, my friend. I did see and I know you talked pre-ups a little bit. Some big news. A little what not. It's not. I wouldn't call it what not. I'd call it a lot of something. A lot of money. A lot of money. Yeah. Give me, since you saw it, give this, give the audience the full flow down. I mean, you know, a company, I mean, they dominate, right? I mean, there's behemoths in this industry that just dominate what they do. And you're talking about, I was he fanatics and for manufacturing, you got PSA from grading, you got eBay from marketplace and you got what not for live streaming. And everyone else is everyone else. And you know, they they dominated that so much that I think what how it thinks how I look at it as a series F round. And they raised I think 225 on a 11 and a half billion dollar valuation, which is almost double of what it was 12 months ago. So what I think is like, hey, look at what we did over here for sports cards. We're going to do that for garden hoses. We're going to do it for this and live shopping. We're going to we're going to crush it all. And they might, they might, but like that's a high valuation, like backing into that. If it was just sports cards, that either shows how big the industry is that no one knows about or there's a lot of things that, you know, potential, potential. And investing potentials not always doesn't always work out. eBay is the monster that everyone's trying to take a bite on. But when you look at eBay live, now you're talking about a startup. eBay live is a startup competing as a behemoth. It's really what everyone, every marketplace did to compete with eBay's marketplace. But eBay should not confuse themselves. Those two are different worlds. They're marketplace versus their live streaming. They're different companies. And they have to look at it differently and be like, we're actually going to we're we're protecting what we built on the marketplace or we're attacking what we want to attack. And it's too, you know, you know, business law enough. That's different mentality. It is. And you know, we we struck a deal to have the ability to do eBay live. And the timing was just off with things that I have with transition, like we intend to still get on there. But what I'll say is what their challenge has been if you're going to, you know, just because you're the leader in marketplace doesn't make doesn't immediately make you the leader in a different segment. And especially when you don't bring out a differentiated product. So their legacy technology led into their live streaming. And it's causing issues. And the issues are that if I can only put 30 cards an hour on to eBay live and I could put 250 on a whatnot, why would I go to eBay live? Now the team, I love the team that eBay live is together. I think they're they're going to figure this out. But they're going to get there. It's a longer longer road than they price on. Yeah. But you know, well, they say mo money, mo problems. More opportunities too. Yeah. But everything cool man. Anything else this week? No, man. I'm all good. Next week at the card shop at the ranger state card shop. Yeah. T. C. S. LudEx card shop at the rangers stadium. Brian's bringing that to the life with the team down there in Texas. Everything's bigger in Texas, baby. True that. Including the LudEx card shop. Appreciate you, man. I hope the Bears get it back together this week. My Tigers played Duke if we can't get I might just go in hibernation if Clemson can't be Duke and football. That would be bad. Oh, good luck with your move, man. I think you're coming to the end of it, man. I know it's been a lot. Yeah. You keep going. Keep grinding. We will. We will. Appreciate your brother. We'll see you next week. We appreciate everyone out there for listening. You can find us at collectibles.show that has all the past episodes. And hey, Ryan's holding up those staying glass cards. We'll do a giveaway next week on those. Eat it. Hey, yeah, rip it. Forget it. Or I think he ripped it and won it. That was a good, good trade off. But yeah, take us out there. YouTube Spotify. Keep download and keep sharing. We appreciate it. We're here to grow with you in the hobby. And get out there and collect something, baby. We'll see you next time on TCC. Thanks for tuning into the show. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast platform. And don't miss the full video version on YouTube. You can find us at www.collectibles.show or follow Ryan on Instagram at Ryan Oldford. Now get out there and collect yours.